“In a region of desperate poverty, four men are hired by an oil company to drive trucks filled with nitroglycerin down treacherous mountain roads in the hot sun.”

This is likely the greatest setup for a film ever, and the first reading of it would send a chill down your spine. The tension is palpable before the film would even begin, as one bad jolt, one tank of nitroglycerin becomes overheated, a single rock slide at the wrong time, and the truck becomes one with the vapor. Moments in silence are no less removed from danger as the volatile fluid cooks in the sun. Hitchcock once noted that if a scene has a bomb in it, ‘show the audience the bomb’. And so this bomb is in full view, and you are left waiting for it to go off. In Wages of Fear, as he did with Diabolique, Henri-Georges Clouzot has made an unforgettable impact in the cinema of tension. A stunning work to be sure, but what makes it an indelible classic is the political statement contained within, one which remains timeless, unfortunately.

The small town in this story could be most anywhere – rural towns are nearly always starving for a source of income. Woe unto those that actually have a local industry, as the discovery of oil, diamonds, or any other lucrative resource only seems to deepen the poverty. Multinationals generally move in with a large investment, and with the promise of jobs and a payoff to the right people in government, the land is broken. Inevitably, the money goes only to the necessary government officials and to the company; the locals get nothing but irreversible disease and trauma. This town is no different. As Mario (a never-better Yves Montand) remarks dryly, “It is easy to get in, but you cannot get out.” People flocked in for work, but there was only work for skilled laborers, and there are no roads out, no trains, and a flight costs far more than anyone has in this decrepit hole. There is nothing to do but drink, subsist, and await the next bar fight. Malaria and leprosy are widespread, but the most common chronic illness is hunger. The entire population lives upon delirium, and works enough to stay in debt. The conscience of the town is within one wide-eyed kid who pleads to anyone in earshot about his work visa, and begs for money to flee to the United States. The greatest aspiration is to be elsewhere.

Clouzot maintains a tight grip upon the production, and even the wide open spaces of this desert town has a claustrophobic feel. In the opening shot, a child wallows in the mud, playing with cockroaches that have been tied together with string. They struggle against each other as they pull in mutually assured inertia – one of the truly great evocative images in populist cinema. Against this rabble is the monolithic SOC, an American oil company. “Where there is oil, Americans are not far behind.” Not much has changed in geopolitics since the 1950s, apart from China emerging as a major player in the petroleum market. Industrial practices are about the same – the work is dangerous, and unskilled locals are the preferred source since they do not have labor unions. Any effort by the proles to disrupt business is met with swift violence at the hands of the company’s private security. They run a tight ship, and brought the entire works and buildings prefabricated – even the cemetery for the workers came ready made.

There is an explosion at the oil drill, and the only way to extinguish the flaming oil gusher is with high explosives. Thus our story begins; still, the stakes would not be so high, nor the extraordinary pressure placed upon the laborers as resonant if Wages of Fear did not spend the first hour in languid character development. The tedium of nowhere in Venezuela is demonstrated in the daily pointless rhythms of boredom. Mario and his cohorts shoot the shit, pass the time, eat, drink, and threaten each other with regularity. There is a woman that Mario fancies, but she is hardly the object of his affection – there is no time or place for strong attachments in this unsentimental terminus. Some have accused Clouzot of misogyny for this indifferent attitude toward women, and the way the only significant female character is treated, but this is the way it is in the harsh places of the world. Women mean attachment, and such things are dangerous when there is little in the way of income. Soft women either become wily opportunists or broken romantics. There is only the work, and the catastrophe at the oil drill means a big payday for those able to survive – US$2000 is enough to escape to a new life. The odds against making a journey across the mountains in a rickety truck without a single jolt sending your nitroglycerin into orbit are astonishingly high, but in a true capitalist system, suicide is as profitable as it is necessary. There is little point withering away in the sun when you can gamble your life away for cash – and you either end up with the means to achieve your goals, or you are dead enough not to care. The Cato Institute would be proud of such a win-win situation.

Though this appears to be a film for the class warrior only, there is a more cynical edge at work here. The lower classes are at each others’ throats in the first act; with the introduction of Jo, a criminal from France who is fleeing the law, tempers flare. The workers are ready to brandish their weapons at a slight, even one so innocuous as turning off a radio in a bar. Several characters set upon each other at first, and these differences vanish once the deadly job appears. Perhaps if a page were borrowed from Upton Sinclair, then the unemployed masses would wreak vengeance upon the company for offering little more than death to its workers. This does not happen in the real world very often, mostly due to manipulation by the company owners, or internecine fighting amidst the workers, and so such a scene has little use in Wages of Fear. The largest character in the film utters nary a line, though it drives every single action – or inaction – that occurs. This character is Fear, that great motivator. It forms that magnificent pillar of supply and demand, and drives every living soul to work their waking moments. The job is offered, and the people line up around the block. There is no class struggle here, which is also strangely relevant to the present. The combination of fear and the drive to consume against a backdrop of globalization has left the world without a labor movement; consider Wages of Fear a harbinger of this world to come.

Apart from its relevance and its stunning depiction of the human spirit placed under impossible pressure, Wages of Fear is cracking entertainment. The scenes where a massive boulder is quietly removed from the road, or two trucks navigate a slippery platform hanging over a precipitous drop rank among the great moments of cinema. Given the leisurely introduction to the characters, the way they respond to their trial resonates with the viewer. Even the reserved quality of Mario fades after he bleeds every drop of his soul in service to SOC – by the time his jittery hands drive the truck into sight of the apocalyptic fire of the drill site, there is nothing left in him. This is one of those films that reaches into you, and leaves you utterly drained by the end. At least it does for those of us fortunate enough not to live under tests like this on a daily basis. For a significant portion of the world, these wages are paid with every morning light.

“When men, even unknowingly are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever their diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.”

When a great filmmaker reinvents cinema, perfects his technique, and begins to coast, what happens to his creative output? Does he crash into a heap or simply fade into history and irrelevance? Godard veered left and became involved in increasingly disconnected projects, Eastwood has been comfortably chasing mediocrity in the Oscar ghetto, and Coppola is still searching for the better part of his brain matter after Apocalypse Now fired a definitive slug through his magnificent dome. Then there are others who still find ways to reinvent themselves. Werner Herzog remains unpredictable and was never better while crafting Grizzly Man or Encounters at the End of the World; Robert Altman made one his best at the bitter end by using the creative process of A Prairie Home Companion to consider mortality. Jean-Pierre Melville, after playing an integral role in the French New Wave, created an entire mythos of the criminal underworld. The landmark Bob Le Flambeur through the cool perfection of Le Deuxiemme Souffle recast noir and established a stylistic world of men in trenchcoats following a code to a seemingly predetermined end. As his filmography came to a close, Melville stayed in this world (apart from his masterpiece, L’Armee Des Ombres), but appeared to become more philosophical about it. Like many of his contemporaries in French cinema, Melville was a fatalist, and the characters in his films reflected this belief. They have parts to play in a grand tragic comedy, and though there are individual decisions to be made, one cannot escape fate. The dancers take their steps in what appears to be a predestined choreography. The gray wolves of Melville’s shadows would seem to be able to evade such an end with lives lived outside of the norm and established rules, but such outsiders adhere to the least forgiving ideology of all. Cops have their duty, hoods have their code, and all have their destiny. What began in Le Samourai came to a resolute end in Le Cercle Rouge.

Corey is a veteran thief who has just been released from prison; before he exits the gates he is offered a diamond heist job by a guard. Vogel is another thief and killer who is on his way to prison, escorted by detective Mattei on board a train. He evades the detective and makes a desperate escape into the forest as winter descends upon the countryside. Both are aberrations from the natural order that will soon be corrected. There is a daring theft, a disturbance in the smooth ocean of daily life, but once the waves break, they return to their previous level. You probably know where the story is going already, but as with any great story, it is in how it is told that our attention is seized. The players are among the best in the business, and watching skilled individuals doing a job well is the best entertainment possible. Corey and Vogel are played by Alain Delon and Gian Maria Volonte, adept men who work in silence, preferring to speak with their eyes when at all possible. Their paths cross and it is as if both were expecting to find the other; when Vogel crawls into the boot of his parked car, Corey registers no surprise. After all, he is on the run as well, after robbing his former employer for giving his ex a reason to betray him. Women do not have much of a place in this world apart from entertainment or disappointment. Masculine figures are all that matter in a world of sharp edges and fatal wounds.

So the hoods are on the run, and the accomplished Mattei is on their trail. Even when he knows full well they have escaped, a good cop knows a criminal will reveal themselves eventually. As his chief is careful to remind him, “All men are guilty. They are born innocent, but it doesn’t last.” He would know; the best policemen think like criminals, move in their circles, embrace their vices. There will be one more intersection for them all. Before we get there, there is a burglary, and it requires the services of a crack shot. In steps ex-cop Jansen, played with steely quiet by Yves Montand. He is an alcoholic, introduced in an unsettling scene that is one of the most vivid episodes of delirium ever filmed. His sure hand may provide him with a moment of redemption; just as performing their tasks skillfully may redeem Corey and Vogel; just as capturing his quarry shall redeem Mattei. Risk and redemption, and the void beyond is a recurrent theme in Melville’s work. He understood that success does not justify itself – victory only lives in the moment, but there is always the failure of tomorrow waiting for you. This can be seen in the resigned look of Vogel and Corey; they regard one another with no fear, just caution. When Vogel meets Corey, he holds a gun on him until intentions are made clear. Corey tosses him a pack of cigarettes, followed by a lighter, requiring Vogel to put away the gun. Mattei clearly shows no gusto for capturing his prey. No self-righteous speeches about right and wrong, since those terms are interchangeable depending on your perspective. He does not do the right thing, just his thing. This can be seen in the costuming for the characters, which are identical – cops and criminals look alike, act alike, speak alike; and if times are tough, they exchange their roles as outlaws turn informer and cops skim off the top.

The centerpiece of Le Cercle Rouge, as with all heist films, is the job itself. Strangely enough, it occurs with little fanfare, no expository dialogue about the setup, and little tension during the job. It would seem lazy, but Melville always has another agenda in play. Almost before the theft is completed, it seems clear that this will make no difference in the outcome, and any sense of triumph should remain fleeting. This is especially true for Montand’s character – an alcoholic ex-cop fresh off his DT’s would be ripe for tragedy. It is up to him to place a shot perfectly or they would all be trapped. After he readies his rifle, bolted into a tripod, he makes a snap decision that sucks the oxygen out of the room. He reclaims his soul – in the practical world this means validation of his craft and nothing more – in a temporary fashion, but that is good enough.

As with all of Melville’s work, the shots are crisp, the details immaculate, every word, gesture and motion efficient almost to a fault. If not for the extraordinary craft, one could accuse the director of egregious exercises in style. Even if so, this is a philosophical work in the guise of a genre film. Melville was no Buddhist, and the opening quote does not reflect a sense of destiny as a vague spiritual force, but rather the inevitability borne of human nature. These are the ants to which Harry Lime referred in the ferris wheel, and they would not begrudge the indifference of a distant audience. There is indulgence in the form of entertainment, whiskey, perhaps an errant rose or time with a woman, but none of these players are under any illusion that such things are granted. These things, joy and pain, all pass and so we meet our end.

William Castle’s deliriously goofy Mr. Sardonicus doesn’t quite reach the dizzying brilliance of either The Tingler or Strait-Jacket, but it’s a gem in its own right; a preposterously insipid B-movie with the gothic grandeur to match. Taking place in an Old Europe only a comfortably stateside studio set could provide, as well as the sort of cold, isolated estate you’d expect to find in a cheapie Nosferatu remake, the film might very well be confused for an old fashioned morality tale, if not for the fact that Castle himself makes an appearance to delight in the villain’s suffering. Under the guise of a “punishment poll” (a particularly clever Castle gimmick), the director emerges from a dry ice fog to ask the audience whether or not the nasty Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe) should be given a last-minute reprieve. Given that only one possible outcome was actually filmed, and that Castle is one of cinema’s most gleeful, smirking sadists, we are delighted to have our baser instincts confirmed. The Baron, in fact, will be destroyed at last. But that’s for the conclusion. The journey to that indelible moment is so engaging and bizarre that we can’t help but wish our current hacks had Castle’s wicked regard for cheap, satisfying entertainment.

The story itself is all Castle: Sir Robert Cargrave (Ronald Lewis), a respected doctor with the power to heal every conceivable ailment with what amounts to a gentle massage, is summoned by the creepy Krull (Oscar Homolka) one evening to visit the home of Mr. Sardonicus. All is shrouded in mystery, but the bait is sweetened when Cargrave is informed that his former love, one Maude Sardonicus (Audrey Dalton), is also in dire straits. Of course it’s a trap, but who knew that in the end, Cargrave would be asked to use his medical knowhow and revolutionary techniques to give Sardonicus a new face. You see, the Baron has lived for years with an unholy grin (imagine the Joker with wax lips and Mr. Ed’s set of choppers); a curse laid upon him after he dug up his father’s grave to retrieve the winning lottery ticket he accidentally placed in his pocket. Who knew the old man would finally have a run of good luck, even though it took dying to see it through. And so we flash back to that fateful night in the cemetery, when the Baron’s life forever changed after coming face to face with his rotting husk of a dad. We too see the body, and it isn’t that revolting, but apparently the guilt is too much for poor Sardonicus, and his new-found riches are soon tempered by Hollywood’s worst-ever make-up job. No wonder they shroud the actor in shadow most of the time (that is, when he isn’t wearing a mask).

In some ways, we can’t blame Sardonicus for his methods (he tells Cargrave that if the “surgery” fails, he will be swiftly killed by Krull), but he’s soon established as an even bigger bastard by kidnapping pretty women for sick experiments. Under the guise of a “night with a millionaire,” Sardonicus selects a single beauty among many to submit to unthinkable torture. It is claimed that these women are dying to help Sardonicus lose the smile, but we know he’s just a bad, bad man. To dispel any further doubt, he hangs people by their thumbs and keeps a secret room under lock and key, where disobedient victims are sent so that they can spend some quality time with the Baron’s dead father. An added quirk is the Baron’s insistence that while picture frames dot the estate, no pictures will be found within them. As Krull explains, “The baron is an unusual man, of unusual convictions. In such frames, ordinary men would honor the portraits of their forefathers. But the baron has disowned his forefathers in one magnificent gesture.” It’s the kind of dialogue that would have made Ed Wood proud.

In the end, the doctor is successful in removing the grin (he seems to have used an experimental muscle relaxer and more vigorous massage), but in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, Sardonicus’ face has so relaxed that he can no longer open his mouth. The irony! Watching the nasty Baron attempt to eat and drink after realizing his new curse is a comic highlight, though one filled with unexpected pathos. Not really. It is then that Cargrave reveals his own secret: he used a simple placebo, while the grin (and locked mouth) are both psychosomatic afflictions that could have been reversed with simple will power. All those riches, and no way to save himself. And so Sardonicus will die alone, afraid, and at the hands of an angry Krull, who uses the Baron’s weakness as an opportunity to get revenge for losing an eye to his master’s savagery. If only Castle had found a way to sneak in Vincent Price before the credits rolled.

Kathryn Bigelow’s respectable effort in 2009’s gritty war drama The Hurt Locker aside, most cinematic adventures helmed by the female persuasion end up like Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron’s listless, limp noodle adaptation of Julie Powell’s inexplicably popular blog and book, both of which should go forever unread by anyone sporting a sliver of self-respect. Regardless of the characters involved, time period under discussion, or geographic location explored (here, contemporary Queens and post-war Paris), the centerpiece becomes the emotional retardation of women, and how, despite driving away the men in their lives with manipulative whining, navel-gazing, and spontaneously irrational outbursts, they are heroic for no reason save their refusal to give in. Their victories, hard-won though they may be, are little more than endurance tests of bulldog stubbornness; endless rounds of tears, roars, and spitfire blasts to keep everyone within earshot attending to their infantile desires. Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is merely the latest in this hate parade, and it seems fitting that her absence of direction (and meaningful work) leads to an obsessive on-line journal that comes to substitute for actual life. She charts her hopes, dreams, cares, and woes, but primarily, this is a quest to cook each and every recipe from Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As you would expect, it’s less about the food than the need to fill a giant chasm spurred by the complete absence of personality. How fortunate she has yet another audience via DVD.

If this unfortunate movie has crossed your path at all, it’s likely you’ve heard that while the Julie scenes are pointless and irritating, the Julia sections shine with a luminous, effortless grace. After all, it’s Meryl Streep we’re talking about, and even in fluff, she always brings her A-game. Having won several critics’ awards so far, she’s now the frontrunner for the Oscar, either signaling the Academy’s pathological need to end the Master’s nearly three-decade drought, or the year’s unparalleled dearth of captivating performances. I’m certain it’s a dash of each, but who on earth thought the long wait would be broken by something so utterly embarrassing? Not only does the film stumble along like a wounded halfwit in search of velvet, the scenes with Julia Child do little but bring to light how even the greatest of talents cannot elevate shit-stained material. We thought Streep could get away with reading the phone book on the john, but sure enough, even she has her limits. Playing Child like a cross between Mrs. Doubtfire and Andre the Giant, Streep is shockingly hateful; a woebegone circus freak with all the charisma of pancreatic cancer. Even her earthy, “common” touch equates to a mangled hoof down the blackboard, and while it would normally be a relief to flip back to the present, Julie’s umpteenth kitchen meltdown is hardly the healing ointment to erase the pain.

Fuck it, man, Streep is downright awful, and no amount of awards buzz can kill the odor. It’s not only a career nadir, it’s enough to resurrect a new blacklist, replacing alleged Communism with the unholy trilogy of bad hair, a dopey drawl, and insipid impersonation. Sure, Meryl, you have that unmistakable voice down pat, but tell us again how this differs from Dan Aykroyd’s classically overrated SNL bit? Predictably, the movie has Julie watch this very scene with her Job-like husband, which serves to unintentionally highlight the absurdity of this whole goddamn enterprise. Sure, we’ve been tolerant of industry titans slumming for dollars and applause before, from Olivier’s “I hef no son” two-step with Neil Diamond, to Joan Crawford jerking off some Geico caveman. And let’s not even mention what Brando did with that progeria midget. But I had always kept Streep on a loftier, more sensible perch, as if the rot was simply her way of winking in our direction. Can she really be blamed, though, when the Best Actress talk is coming from the critical realm? Perhaps she always knew this was a late summer tax write-off; a way to wind down before the real work began. Nope, this is Meryl’s Choice, and this time, she sent us all to the gas chamber.

Nilbog, Utah is one wacky town. Shunning Mormons in favor of vegetarian midgets who have acquired special powers from a steam-spewing slab of Stonehenge, this quaint little hamlet, through the charisma of a local preacher and a Sheriff named Freak, orchestrates the kidnapping of unsuspecting tourists, force-feeds them green slime, and turns them into trees, all so the little buggers can devour the plant people in a slobber-filled orgy. Thankfully, a Hemingway-esque grandpa, conveniently dead, supplies a deus ex machina in the form of a bologna sandwich to bring credibility to the proceedings. Confused? Undoubtedly, but this is Troll 2, one of the all-time champs of bad cinema that just happens to live up to the billing. Instead of cheeky irony through the route of intentional incompetence, this is the real deal; a piece of crap made by the deadly serious, as well as the seriously damned. Having just seen the documentary Best Worst Movie, a wonderfully reverential revisiting of the cast and crew, as well as a history of the film’s rise from obscurity to cult classic, I was well armed with the particulars, but it took an actual viewing to set it all straight.

Having no connection to the original Troll, nor featuring trolls of any kind, Troll 2 follows the semi-retarded Waits family as they decide to take a vacation to the one town in Utah that has no natural wonders, campsites, or actual things to do. But dear old dad, Michael (played by George Hardy, who, we learn from the documentary, is a dentist in Alabama, but now trades on his inappropriate fame to the exclusion of all else), is convinced that a few ramshackle barns and dilapidated storefronts will be enough to keep his family interested for several weeks. Thankfully, they are exchanging homes with some locals, who greedily accept Michael’s keys without so much as an introduction. The son, a plucky little shit named Joshua, has been warned by his expired pee-paw to avoid the town because of the homicidal goblins, but dad ignores such nonsense with his usual can-do spirit. Greeting a table full of assorted green (and poisonous) beverages, cakes, and donuts upon arrival, dad, mom, and sis are about to dig in when grandpa appears to Joshua, stops time, and commands him to come up with a plan in 30 seconds, or else meet with certain doom. Fulfilling his end of the bargain, Joshua leaps on a chair, pulls down his pants, and urinates on dinner. Tragedy is averted, but only long enough to see Joshua punished by a screaming father: “You can’t piss on hospitality! I won’t allow it!” The line has made Mr. Hardy famous, which he cheerfully recites at midnight screenings, conventions, and yes, even at the film festival I attended, where he was an honored guest.

Needless to say, a full plot summary is both unnecessary and unbearably taxing, as the real show lies in the acting. All are atrocious beyond compare, but no one reaches the dizzying heights of hellishness of one Connie Young (playing the Waits’ daughter, Holly). Check it all off in turn — stilted, teeth-grindingly earnest, painfully emotive — but her finest hour is the impromptu mirror dance, which combines the worst of late ‘80s hair, clothing (a Garfield t-shirt!), and gag-me-with-a-spoon vernacular. The film seems to think she’s a sexy young vixen (she first appears in a leotard lifting weights), which is proven when the town’s hottest stud, Elliott, comes to call. She’s not having it, however, as he spends way too much time with his male friends. It’s an unreasonable ultimatum, though I doubt she’d think so if she were to see the scene where he and his buddies drive a camper to Nilbog and routinely stumble out in various stages of undress. At one point, two of the boys are in bed together, shirtless and unconscious. Fortunately for Holly, most of Elliott’s friends are devoured by the goblins, though one is tortured in a bizarre mating ritual with a local nutjob. In one of the most incomprehensible scenes in movie history, the aging harlot knocks on the camper door, produces an ear of corn, and proceeds to make out with the boy with the cob clenched between her teeth. The heat generated by the kissing produces several pounds of popcorn, much to the delight of the young man, as well as a stupefied audience.

Apparently, it is imperative that victims eat green slop before being slaughtered as plants, as no one is so evil as to murder a human being. All the locals treat eating meat as the gravest of sins, including the strange store keeper, who flies into a fire-eyed rage at the mere mention of bacon. Coffee is also strongly forbidden. Some might interpret all of this hostility as a bizarre subtext, but it’s hard to believe that anyone is supposed to come off sympathetically. Nevertheless, it is important to learn, thanks once again to the documentary, that the director, a humorless Italian named Claudio Fragasso, saw depth and pathos where others saw dwarfs in bad Halloween costumes running around with sticks. Fragasso has, to some extent, signed on for the cultish celebration, but more often than not, he’s brooding while others laugh along with demented crowds. Apparently, he saw spiritual struggle and a parable of survival, but thus is the peril of filming a script in a language he could barely understand. At least Hardy, fame whore that he now is, hasn’t tried to channel his lone role into Shakespeare in the Park. Sure, he gets pissed when he goes unrecognized at horror fests (a booth he mans goes unvisited), but he never loses that toothy grin.

The same cannot be said for Margo Prey, the woman who played the mother, Diana Waits. There isn’t a single convincing moment throughout her shriek-filled performance, but the true tragedy lies in her post-movie life, which has been filled with loneliness, mental illness, and a future that, at best, involves hoarding or a hasty suicide. One would think that she too would ride the gravy train of assorted conventions and the autograph circuit, but apparently she couldn’t survive the film’s finale, in which she is devoured before her son’s eyes, even though the entire family had appeared to escape Nilbog’s wrath. Did they not set the preacher on fire? And what about that aforementioned bologna sandwich, which just happens to set off a chain of events whereby every goblin within earshot vomits green Jell-O, falls to the floor in full seizure, and dies? And what about those crude lightning bolts that run straight from Stonehenge to the goblin’s frail hearts? Nope, not enough. Everyone, it turns out, survived, and followed the Waits family home, perhaps in anticipation of Troll 3. Alas, it was not to be. For now, we’re stuck with a masterpiece of crapola; the one that damn near got away, only to be revived by a new generation of cinematic masochists. Here’s to ‘em.

“Any resemblance to real events, to persons living or dead, is not accidental. It is DELIBERATE.”

Z is, quite simply, the finest movie about politics and political struggle ever made. With apologies to Battle of Algiers, thrilling in its own right, Z is a masterwork of satire, a vitriolic lash against the suffocating fascism which gleefully masquerades as democracy, and brimming with the sort of dark humor that thrives upon tragedy and exhilarates with disasters. The film is unique in seeming action-packed with fast-moving scenes of people who mostly talk or sit still; this is high-impact politics where two immovable objects collide and annihilate. Just as he did with the exemplary Missing, Costa-Gavras brings a powerful voice to cinema and excels at examining the difficult nature of politics while never losing sight of the human core that is crushed underneath the weight of a conflict.

The opening quote from above is only the first of many playful salvos to assure you that this is not the sort of timid work that avoids provocation to maximize the size of an audience. Loosely based on events in Greece in the 1960s, Z is meant to take place in Anynation, during any time period. In 1963, popular leftist deputy Gregoris Lambrakis was assassinated in Athens, and an investigation by Christos Sartzetakis found connections between the assassins, the police, and fascist extremist elements in Greece. The far-right government of Greece consolidated power by military dictatorship in 1967 and Sartzetakis was imprisoned. The junta remained in power until 1974 with the help of military and economic support from the United States. Throughout, Lambrakis’s memory remained fresh in the minds of the citizens, and the symbol ‘Z’ became a rallying cry, meaning ‘He (Lambrakis) is alive’. Sartzetakis became an icon of integrity, but it is important to remember that while he was imprisoned and Lambrakis murdered, they were both known as communist villains under the junta while the murderers were ‘rehabilitated’ as heroes of the nation. It only takes a bit of repetition and on-message bloviating to rend even the largest personality asunder, changing their legacy with the help of demagogues. Z is about not only the intrigue surrounding the aftermath of a political assassination, but the attempt to bury a legacy and the extraordinary sacrifice required to simply maintain the truth.

The immortal Yves Montand plays the charismatic physician-turned-politician whose is poised to win the presidential vote. He attends a rally that has been sabotaged by the police. Threats and bureaucracy have denied them a proper venue for a rally, and thugs are dispatched to ensure a violent scene that can be blamed on the communists. In front of a frenzied crowd, with a phalanx of policemen watching idly, a truck speeds into the square and an assailant clubs the contender on the head. He falls to the ground, never to regain consciousness. As the right wing government moves to cover up the incident as a drunken accident, the leftist party tries to release the information, and the man’s wife watches silently as her whole life ebbs before her eyes. Often movies that focus upon politics forget that real human lives are lost and the twisted scar of broken families is easily forgotten. It is to Costa-Gavras’s credit that Montand’s character is always at the center of the story and its outcome. He dies, and his party is prevented from making any further statements by the police. All would have been lost were it not for the work of an investigating magistrate who discovers that the autopsy shows not that he was struck from the side by a moving vehicle, but from above with a club, making murder the only likely possibility. A photojournalist uncovers the connections between a right-wing extremist group and the police, and the structure collapses in a breakneck paced procedural ending in a finale that will have any reasonable viewer on their feet as the sacred cows of the administration are indicted for premeditated murder. All of that was possible due to the magistrate being a trusted member of the legal system, and a fastidiously apolitical judge. Testimony from known leftists is tossed out as unreliable, and pressure from conservatives is ignored. He methodically builds a factual case that catches the corrupt police chief and his minions off guard. The labyrinth of lies collapses in impressive fashion as the viewer is pulled rapidly through the mess.

The film does not end there, however, balancing the relief of seeing justice done with the cold and unsentimental truth that justice is rarely complete. The magistrate is replaced, witnesses are murdered, perpetrators exonerated, and the junta takes power and bans peace movements, music, labor unions, sociology, Tolstoy, Sophocles, Chekov, Pinter, the free press, and the letter Z. The viewer is jailed in a wall of text from all those things reactionaries find so hateful. Depressingly, this is the only way events could go. Conservative ideologues, for all their bleating of democracy and freedom, have little use for either once their power is threatened.

Costa-Gavras is anything but subtle, and his dark and unforgiving tone has been criticized as the voice of a cynic. I am not sure if that is even something one can criticize in a director. Z is his most famous work, and is a gem of progressive filmmaking. Despite its expeditious pacing, it would be a distressing slog were it not for a vicious sense of humor. The film opens with a montage of increasingly ridiculous medals, all made to cover the blunt corruption and dishonor of those who wear them as talismans against their own worthless nature.The intellectual poverty of the right wing is repeatedly attacked with a series of sly jokes, starting with a rather silly and dull lecture about diseases to an administrative forum. The ‘isms’ so dangerous to deeply conservative politicians are compared to fungal diseases in crops, which must be sprayed with copper sulfate to prevent their spread. That a right-wing extremist government cannot tolerate competition from populist movements is but one facet of the commentary. That the extremists find this sort of thing edifying is funny in itself. When recalling the scene of the murder, the right-wing thugs, policemen, and politicians all use the same phrasing in a clever play upon their inability to think independently. When several of the members of the murder plot are indicted, they attempt to leave the magistrate’s chamber through a door to the left, which is locked. They are uncontrollably driven to the right whilst being photographed by the press, soon to be banned. Not the most subtle symbolism, but considering the density of these references, this quality makes the film accessible. In the final bleak aftermath scene, the journalist telling the story of the investigation (as to a television audience) becomes part of the photographs as his arrest is announced. Sardonic wit is all one has to view a tragedy in motion without becoming depressed.

Still, no story ends – not even somber ones. The junta fell eventually when anti-American sentiment and pro-democracy movements started to gain ground. Intellectuals exiled by the dictatorship, the enormous popularity of the 1969 release of Z, and pressure from other European nations opened a factional split in the junta, leading to a counter-coup, loss of support of key military officers, and a collapse of the dictatorship. That a right-wing extremist government that utilized torture and denied basic human rights (cough) was seen as an ally against Communism was embarrassing to the Western Bloc of NATO, and delayed the incorporation of Greece into the European Union. Most importantly, the history of this dictatorship stands as a reminder that such things can happen rather easily under the right circumstances. For this unfortunate reason, Z is timeless, and will never lose its relevance.

It begins with a suicide. Not a particularly nasty suicide, mind you, as the victim all but rests his head on a desk as if curling up for a late afternoon nap. The gunshot immediately brings forth a second character, though she’s a none-too-panicky sort who may as well have stumbled upon spilled milk in the kitchen, rather than the freshly minted corpse of her beloved husband. And so we have 1953’s The Big Heat, Fritz Lang’s hot little ticket to the noir sweepstakes; a film as tightly wound as any of the big name entries, though one of the few to recognize the inherent pleasure of watching Lee Marvin toss scalding hot coffee into a woman’s face for having the audacity to live up to her loose character. The woman in question, Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame), remains one of the era’s most scintillating dames of ill repute; the sort of tramp who isn’t above adding a dash of class to her gutter ballets, even as she’s readying herself for the inevitable fall. Standing above the din, though only for as long as it takes to lose his pretty young wife to murder, is Glenn Ford as Dave Bannion; a righteous detective whose fealty to truth and justice renders him absurdly naïve at best, and embarrassingly impotent in the long run. He’s a sucker who insists on peeking behind the curtain, even if it costs him everything he holds dear.

When it turns out that the opening suicide is a fellow cop, Bannion obligingly pursues a few leads, though his pavement-pounding turns up little save the usual half-truths. Seems the old guy was in a sickly way, and he could no longer take the pain. But what’s a wife to know? And what about the B-girl, the one who emerged from the dead cop’s bustling stable just long enough to reveal her nasty little secret of seduction and false promises? Foolishly, she believed he was about to divorce his wife, though she wouldn’t be the first by-the-hour starlet to assume life could be built on the remnants of a motel quickie. She doesn’t buy the official story, and while more vague than exact, her tale is just enough to get her killed. By the film’s well-dressed dialogue of the period, it’s apparent that she was raped, strangled, burned with cigarettes, and tossed out of a moving car. Her body quickly turns up, however, what with this sick town being not so sick as to ignore nude females bloating roadside, and Bannion quickly theorizes that there’s more here than a tired cop who casually cheated on his wife. His decision to keep his nose to the stink lays the groundwork for the requisite tragedy.

Bannion’s domestic life, so achingly Eisenhower in its honey-I’m-home banality, turns hellish in all the time it takes for wifey-poo to meet her maker through the crudely effective means of a car bomb. Only the dynamite was intended for Dave, and the killers didn’t anticipate her need to pick up the babysitter. Though the car appears only to have suffered minor damage (yeah, it’s on fire, but only the hood is crushed), Mrs. Bannion dies most cruelly, as she’s pulled from the wreckage without so much as a black smudge on her cheek. But die she must, as Dave must become world-weary and vengeful inside by the next frame, a task taken on with full fury by the ever-reliable Ford. We believe him and in him every step of the way, even if he’s more likely to knock a goon to the ground than dirty his piece. Bannion is after the men who slaughtered his wife, yes, but he’s also on the march to bring down the whole rotten enterprise; a town so teeming with corruption that city officials think nothing of playing cards with gangsters and low-lifes, even if it would be impossible to explain why you’re spending your evenings with a guy who looks like Lee Marvin. Semper Fi sumbitch though he was, few men walked so fine a line between barrel-chested toughness and Mongoloid ugly. It didn’t help matters that Lang lit the poor bastard like he was an escaped exhibit from the travelling freak show.

But at least there’s the whiff of manhood about him. The crime boss, Lagana, is an effete slug with a mother complex; the Norman Bates of the rough-and-tumble syndicate. When Bannion visits his estate one evening, ostensibly to get answers, Lagana is dwarfed by a massive oil painting of the sainted mama, leading to the inescapable conclusion that his “gang” is just about the only socially acceptable manner by which to indulge his locker room fantasies. And the more vulgar the better. Typically, Lagana forces others to perform the heavy lifting, proving yet again that wherever there is a powerful man behind a desk, there is a near-fanatical need to overcompensate for fears of sexual inadequacy. It’s no stretch to believe that Debby once nestled under Lagana’s well-tailored arm, only to be shoved aside for yet another glimpse of mother-dear. Even there, she took a beating without complaint, but soon learned that with Vince, she’d at least get a pillowside reprieve from the pain, no matter how brief. And while Lagana stews in the juices of opulence, flattery, and perfumed luxury, it is the brutishness of his underlings who are cast in the sweatiest of lights.

And yet, Marvin’s Vince Stone is practically heroic in his dimwitted adherence to the criminal code, the very one that secures a swell penthouse pad in return for the joy of smacking around the non-compliant. And so we come back to Stone’s arm candy, Miss Marsh, the very one to be so kind as to stand still to receive her boiling cauldron of Folgers. Though tipping its cap to Cagney’s grapefruit in the same breath it calls for more aggressively leashing our womenfolk in the post-war era, the disfigurement is, by Debby’s estimation, not entirely unwarranted. After all, she openly chased after Bannion like a lost puppy, and was she not prepared to put flesh to well-starched sheet after a mere five words and a shot of cheap whiskey? So when you come back late, both interrupting a highly-charged card game and humiliating Vince in front of his boys, it’s hardly unconscionable to spend the rest of the picture with half your face wrapped in gauze. Debby knows the score, and though now resigned to a life in the shadows (she even returns to Bannion’s apartment and insists the lights stay decidedly dimmed), she’s just a sap, after all; a one-tricky floozy without the self-respect to stay off her back now and again. Needless to say, she bucks up, stiffens her resolve, and wrests control of the justice train at long last, though not out of any sense of nobility. She’s up for the martyr bit, but who’s to begrudge her a long-needed fix of bloodlust? Though her “resurrection” is not entirely unexpected, the manner and timing must come to the viewer unexplained, as a buzzing light in the night sky.

But what of Dave Bannion, this one-man crusade for righteousness? It’s telling that he fails to kill a single man in his quest (even the final shootout with Vince remains wound-free), and one wonders if Lang would argue that vigilantism must, by necessity, be a hollow pursuit. Bannion can’t pull the trigger in numerous contexts – he even brushes aside a heaving Debby with a widower’s soppy guilt – so has the call been made for men of less explosive tendencies to lead us to the suburbs? If we become like the city, do we not die amidst the rubble? All of this seemed moot when Bannion started choking the life out of the crooked cop’s scheming wife, but even there, true release must yield to the coitus interruptus of an ill-timed intrusion. And hell, Bannion’s efforts, while boosted by the underpinnings of a clenched jaw and lifeless stare, could not match Debby’s noble deed. While Bannion stroked and slapped and pounded himself to no avail, Debby used the female orgasm for good, rather than ill. Revolutionary to be sure, but quickly stifled by a politically hypocritical decade that channeled such electricity into self-loathing and pill-popping deference. Women could, in theory, still bloody their knees and submit to being passed around like a bubblegum card, but never again would their potency outwit the male of the species. In just a few short years, Bannion would always get his juice back, even if it had to wait until the final act.

After his one-two punch of Knife in the Water and the superior Repulsion, Roman Polanski appeared poised to become the contemporary answer to Hitchcock. Both are thrillers, minimalist in nature and depend on character development to increase the tension to a palpable degree, but Repulsion shows extraordinary maturity in the skill of its craftsman. A film that was quite controversial in its time, Repulsion focuses its narrow lens upon the fragile state of mind of its protagonist, who is twisted into painful knots of paranoid delusions whilst drowning in an ocean of sexual repression and fear of intimacy. As played by Catherine Deneuve, the character of Carole Ledoux is an opaque, blank-eyed cipher, withdrawn and fearful of the world around her– in particular, men.

As time progresses, and her mental state begins to decay during a harrowing weekend spent in near solitude in an apartment that appears to grow and shrink in Kafkaesque fashion, we are allowed to see deeper into her tortured psyche. The walls crack, maniacally grinning men lie in wait to assault her, and a skinned rabbit carcass progressively rots (only the most obvious of the visual metaphors). The violent end that approaches becomes almost sensible, and perhaps for the heroine, cathartic. As an atmospheric exploration of cerebral breakdown that is thankfully short on pat explanations, Repulsion excels.

There is something else going on here, though. The subtext is at first muted, but with time and the progression of the behavior of the male characters in the piece, Polanski’s hand shows all too clearly. The film is an exploration of contemporary marriage. Marriage itself functions mostly as a business arrangement designed to bring financial stability to the family structure, without which the first sleepless night spent changing the tenth shitty diaper would send any sane man packing pronto. The legal bond of marriage is not necessary for love or intimacy, but it is essential for the progressive mind games that resemble cabin fever in their intensity and requirement of close quarters. That women are somewhere between opportunistic and insane needs no further discussion, but in the manacles of wedded bliss the quality of complacency is added, and the fate of the man is sealed. Of course the man is equally to blame for being foolish enough to enter into a bargain whereby they stand to lose everything and gain only a dinner partner for the rest of their days. The man pursues the woman, and after a protracted fight with any inferior suitors, lands his prize, only to watch it bloat, bleat, and burst forth with innumerable spawn. In a majority of cases, the end result is divorce, only to be followed anew by the chase and capture of another wife, so that the same painful cycle can be repeated because men have the attention span of gnats.

In Repulsion, the heroine lacks several critical bolts that might have held her together. That she is afflicted with crippling paranoia is but one choice amidst a vast buffet of psychological perforations from which Polanski could have chosen. Carole exhibits primarily cluster A traits consistent with both paranoid and schizoid disorders given her extreme fears and suspicions. Whether the rapist who visits on a regular basis is a hallucination or an obsessive dream is up for debate. Carole appears to dance improbably across the personality disorder spectrum, with strong borderline symptoms (her world is fairly black and white, and her behavior deeply impulsive) and a mixture of avoidant and dependent personality disorder features. She has extreme social and sexual inhibition as well as a devastating dependence on her sister, whose mere absence from the apartment has driven Carole to the brink.

Though it is very rare for a psychiatric case to have symptoms this broad, it can be said that the character is meant to be representative rather than realistic. To wit, all women are this crazy. The only difference lies in which cluster of personality disorders they may have.

One young man is smitten with her, asks her out to dinner, and continues to push and chase her in the streets until he finally breaks down her door to make plain his obsession with her. When his brain is properly tenderized and his body dumped in the tub to decompose, it can be safely assumed that the ring is on her finger and vows have been exchanged. There is no need for the former romantic figure, brimming with optimism – that poor bastard can be left to the rats and roaches. At this point, the cynic is about to arrive. And arrive he does in the form of the landlord, who also breaks down the door (after boards have been nailed up as a fair warning) to make clear what the deal is. The primary issue is money, as it is with all nuptial agreements. Money then mutates into a power struggle, no doubt because little miss mindfuck has little earning potential while declining to bring any other skills to the table. This ends as it should, with the straight razor opening every exposed artery, and the man bleeds dry and the sofa is upturned on his lifeless body (fitting, as he has been sleeping on the sofa for the past several weeks). A better description of divorce would be difficult to come by, unless one prefers metaphors involving the rectum. Finally the door is broken down one last time by Carole’s sister, who discovers what the protagonist hath wrought. Her limp form is carried from the apartment by yet another man, who is keen to turn a blind eye to the devastation of the scene. In short, the divorcee, despite the alimony, child support, and literal and figurative scars, is ready for further punishment.

Now, bear in mind that this opinion is heavily shaded by my own experience, and my personal feeling that marriage is for those who feel that they were born with an excess of limbs and vital organs and can do without much of either. You may have the exact opposite of my opinion based upon your experiences – and we would both be correct. Such is the charm of truly solid cinema, that we can see what we view as our own truth, all the while enthralled by the story as laid out by a master of the craft.

It would be all too easy to dismiss Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point as a failed relic of hippie excess; a notorious auteur’s survey of the swingin’ sixties that predictably falls on the side of righteous youth. In fact, I steeled myself for this very result, and from the opening credits — scattered shots of campus radicals yammering simplistic slogans that did nothing to disabuse me of my negative expectations — I was set to slog through the standard clichés of fighting the machine, embracing experimentation, and living with perceived authenticity. But as the film played out before me, my notions of Antonioni’s overall intent shifted with jarring force. By the end, knowing that Antonioni has always confounded easy interpretation, I realized that his indictment — and the movie, despite it all, remains as such — was not at all in the realm of the obvious. Far from pro-hippie, anti-Man, or being supportive of the radical element that flourished throughout the decade, this is a brutal, unyielding attack not on America, per se, but what America hath wrought in the form of its alleged rebelliousness. Our country is not empty and barren simply because it erects billboards on every conceivable roadside, but rather because it no longer possesses the language, insight, or strategy to challenge anything worth a damn. It is, simply put, alienated from even knowing how to be properly alienated anymore.

Lest that sound ridiculous, consider that Antonioni has chosen as his symbols of the new order the two least interesting human beings on the planet; two ciphers so bereft of even the most minute levels of self-awareness that were it left to them to instigate revolution, the whole damn enterprise would suffocate from boredom. This is no accident. Mark and Daria are not Bonnie and Clyde revisited, but dimwitted dullards who can’t even be bothered to act rashly. Sure, Mark steals a plane and flies to the desert, but does so only after attending a protest and, well, failing to do anything at all. He appears to have the desire to shoot a cop, but someone else steps in before he can act, the first of many ineffectual efforts by our two “heroes.” Mark is clearly upset by something (though his wooden performance makes it difficult to establish any emotion save ennui), but he lacks all the tools for converting his turmoil to agency of any kind. While his plane ride might be misconstrued as a daring act of freedom, it’s best to see it instead as a fool’s errand; a journey to nowhere by a truly unimaginative man. Even on the flight back to Los Angeles, he does nothing more than paint the stolen plane with hippie buzzwords and loud symbols, as if he were from another planet armed with a self-styled handbook about anti-establishment behavior on Earth. There isn’t a genuine gesture to be found, as it’s all artifice. Score one for Antonioni.

He strikes again with his portrayal of Mark and Daria’s desert love affair; to date one of the least inspiring romantic endeavors between two otherwise healthy, attractive youngsters. There again is the point in bold colors: we expect virile youth to take shots, abuse the system, and either get away with our applause, or die trying in a hail of sexy gunfire. Instead, the pair meet on a lonely road after Mark plays footsie with Daria, with a plane and car substituting for actual appendages. They talk in dull monotone, though with the sanctimonious conviction of the period, and play around as if skipping through the sand could solve issues of hunger and poverty. Then, in a flash, they are naked; rolling about with abandon, in a montage that seems to go on forever. Antonioni, cleverly, also shows dozens of like-minded couples frolicking in the dust and dirt, pointedly reminding us that while claims were made to change the world, all these kids really wanted was a place to fuck and get stoned without interruption. The mess and tangle of flesh, at least here, is meant to emphasize the interchangeability of these so-called revolutionaries. One, at last, is as worthless as the other. Privilege never pushed a sea change, it only fostered an entire generation of armchair assassins who lectured far and wide with the good fortune of having somewhere to go after the whole thing fell apart.

Not much happens during the film’s 110-minute running time, but that’s in the spirit of the director’s stubbornly consistent vision of the human animal. Abandoning instinct, desire, and creativity, we fall back on traditions and robotic rituals without considering the possibility of an alternative. I have little doubt that Antonioni craves a new chapter for our species, but here, he’s arguing with vehemence and conviction that whenever the call may come, it won’t be coming from America. It’s not just that we’ve been reduced to taking to the streets only when we discover personal inconvenience, or, in the modern era of the college campus, finding more cause for alarm in the enforcement of drinking laws than the erosion of free speech or global voting rights; we are simply not cut out for the fight. Reasonable, sympathetic protest died with the Civil Rights movement, and the era on display in Zabriskie Point might as well be on the moon by comparison. Some claimed it was an immoral war that stoked the fires; I saw the call for sacrifice that now reached white suburban doorsteps, and the kiddos were spooked to hell by the line now crossed. Antonioni may have supported raised fists against Vietnam, though he wisely avoids any specifics here. All he cares about is that whatever the cause, it won’t ever be enough.

The most talked about — and caustic — turn in the movie is at the end, when a desert retreat (where executives building a well-to-do housing community discuss their plans) is blown to hell from a dozen different angles, though only in the madness of Daria’s imagination. Having learned of Mark’s death moments earlier (he was gunned down on the runway after returning the stolen plane), Daria stares blankly ahead and is greeted by the massive explosion. The flames are not, however, a call to arms against suburbia, white people, or wealth. Instead, the blast is only possible in the minds of the limp and powerless. They craved big, important gestures, but in the end, had nothing lasting to say. That said, Antonioni isn’t even suggesting that the building and all it symbolized should have been destroyed. Radicalism bent on mere opposition — as accurate a representation of the hippie movement our language affords — cannot, by definition, lead an individual life, let alone a city, nation, or widespread cause. Lacking practical solutions or details, abstract “missions” wither and die when stripped from their placards and hastily photocopied leaflets. In the end, Antonioni saw beauty in our physical environment, and even in our faces, but we hadn’t the muscle, the balls, or the brains to move beyond prettified exteriors. It seems we left more than our clothes behind in the desert.

With a timeline in the billions of years and a choice of vistas from the highest mountain peak to the deepest ocean trench, Nature is the greatest of cinematographers. Even the most routine of moments possesses tremendous beauty and commands our attention  as a crucial component to an elegant system. With the changing of the seasons, key elements converge to create massive spectacles that stagger the imagination. For six of our planet’s most impressive events, David Attenborough is there to highlight not only the exquisite artistry, but also the fragile constitution of the system that makes these events possible. As always, the spectre of human intervention hangs heavily over the proceedings, as climate change, consumption of habitat for farm and industrial land, and outright extermination of species threatens these and other events across the globe. If you appreciate visual pageantry, or if you want to give your Blu-ray system a serious workout, this is the documentary series that will do the trick.

Two episodes in particular are standouts, and both take place on the African continent. ‘The Great Tide’ refers to The Sardine Run, taking place every few years off the coast of South Africa, where a shoal of sardines numbering in the hundreds of millions is lured from the cool ocean depths to the African coast where the world’s largest army of predators has gathered to ambush them. The sardine groups are drawn into cold water, as warm water tends to exist along shallows and coastal areas where their numbers cannot protect them from predators. As the cold Agulhas current pushes up along the coast during the winter months, it pushes back against currents coming from the north; this creates an abnormally frigid coastal artery that attracts and then traps the sardines.

The documentary spends ample time developing the characters of this mighty clash. Cape Gannets, remarkable in their stark beauty and their aerial dexterity, breed off the coast in enormous numbers, but the chance of survival for an individual chick is slim. Once they are strong enough to fly, their parents abandon them, and they have ten days to learn to fly or starve; if they successfully achieve flight, there is a chance they will falter in the breakers (hundreds are battered to death in the waves) or be killed by a seal. One gannet, thoroughly beaten by the relentless waves and rocks, hauls itself upon land and dies, the moment containing all the gravity of Shakespearean tragedy. If they survive, the gannets will form an integral part of the Sardine Run spectacle. They are joined by common Dolphin, who expertly hunt down and round up the sardines into small ‘bait balls’ that allows for easier hunting of individual fish. Various sharks, from Ragged-Tooth to Great Whites, take advantage of the dolphins’ work. Lastly the Bryde’s (pronounced Broo-duhs) Whale dives in to take ten thousand sardines in a single gulp. Once the predators find the shoal, the attack begins and is sustained with impossible intensity. The roiling sardines, expertly moving dolphins, and the divebombing gannets form a stunning visual poetry that transcends wildlife filmmaking and drifts into the realm of ageless elegance.

The other episode is less visually intense, but documents the violent and rather abrupt change that occurs in the Okavango Delta after intense rains fall upon the Angolan highlands and spill into a river that terminates not into a lake or ocean, but into the driest desert on earth. The Kalahari is almost devoid of plant life during its dry season, but the camera crew finds a herd of elephants struggling their way through this lethal setting. The matriarch is there for a reason, however, as she knows that the rains will fall, and the parched sands will come alive. Still, the tension created by this narrative is quite real, and most involving as you follow them into an uncertain future. When the precious water finds its way through dry river beds into the sands, the entire vista is transformed into a lake. As elephants, lions, cape buffalo, and various other savanna animals enter the fresh waters, we notice that the land itself seems to have come alive; fish explode from a distant marsh, and many species of frog actually live permanently in this desert, using the brief presence of water to exit hibernation, eat, breed, and reenter hibernation in an endless cycle.

Despite the triumphant moments the animals share, there is no guarantee that the life-providing cycle will continue. As the climate changes, water supplies dwindle, and the natural habitat that the flora and fauna require to replenish their numbers continues to be destroyed, these remarkable events may cease abruptly. Very little is understood about how these and most wildlife ecosystems really work. And therein lies the black-box warning: unless research into the intricacies of the planet’s ecosystems accelerates and serious effort is made to properly fuse the habitat of the human with the rest of its fellow species, disaster is guaranteed.